


About Sansa’s first crush and her taste in men

by butterfliesdragons



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Meta, Sansa-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-18
Updated: 2018-08-18
Packaged: 2019-06-29 09:41:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15726843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/butterfliesdragons/pseuds/butterfliesdragons
Summary: A meta post about Sansa and The Stark Look originally posted on Tumblr on Apr 9th, 2018





	About Sansa’s first crush and her taste in men

After finding [this post](https://galactic-eyed-dreamer.tumblr.com/post/171632512749/sansas-first-crush-vs-aryas-first-crush), I felt the need to say a few things about it.

I know the OP has established that this post is based on the show. So based on the show the OP is implying that Arya has a better taste in men than Sansa, because you know, Joe Dempsie is a hunk and Jack Gleeson is an excellent actor.

But we have to remember that the show is an adaptation of the Books, and maybe the cast team did not find a hunky actor for portraying Joffrey and chose Jack Gleeson for his quality at acting, but that doesn’t erase the fact that Book Joffrey was very good looking. Let’s see:

Book Joffrey was so handsome that made Jon Snow feel extremely jealous:

 

> _His half sisters escorted the royal princes. Arya was paired with plump young Tommen, whose white-blond hair was longer than hers. **Sansa, two years older, drew the crown prince, Joffrey Baratheon. He was twelve, younger than Jon or Robb, but taller than either, to Jon’s vast dismay.**  Prince Joffrey had his sister’s hair and his mother’s deep green eyes. A thick tangle of blond curls dripped down past his golden choker and high velvet collar.  **Sansa looked radiant as she walked beside him, but Jon did not like Joffrey’s pouty lips or the bored, disdainful way he looked at Winterfell’s Great Hall.**   _
> 
> **—A Game of Thrones - Jon I**

Book Joffrey was so handsome that even Arya sounds jealous:

 

> _“We were talking about the prince,” Sansa said, her voice soft as a kiss._
> 
> _Arya knew which prince she meant: **Joffrey, of course. The tall, handsome one.**  Sansa got to sit with him at the feast. Arya had to sit with the little fat one. Naturally._
> 
> **—A Game of Thrones - Arya I**

See?  **Arya thought that Joffrey was handsome**  and it would not have bothered her to be the one sitting next to him at the feast…

And of course, Book Joffrey was so handsome that Sansa thought she was in love with him:

 

> _Prince Joffrey might be there. Her betrothed. Just thinking it made her feel a strange fluttering inside, even though they were not to marry for years and years. **Sansa did not really know Joffrey yet, but she was already in love with him. He was all she ever dreamt her prince should be, tall and handsome and strong, with hair like gold.**_
> 
> **—A Game of Thrones - Sansa I**

Actually, Joffrey’s physical beauty was the only good thing he possessed:

 

> _**Joffrey. He had been a handsome lad, tall and strong for his age, but that was all the good that could be said of him.**  It still shamed Ser Arys to remember all the times he’d struck that poor Stark girl at the boy’s command. When Tyrion had chosen him to go with Myrcella to Dorne, he lit a candle to the Warrior in thanks. “Joffrey is dead, poisoned by the Imp.” He would never have thought the dwarf capable of such enormity. “Tommen is king now, and he is not his brother.”_
> 
> **—A Feast for Crows - The Soiled Knight**

Handsome, tall and strong for his age, sounds pretty similar to Gendry’s description:

 

> _The master called over **a tall lad about Robb’s age, his arms and chest corded with muscle.**  “This is Lord Stark, the new Hand of the King,” he told him as the boy looked at Ned through sullen blue eyes and pushed back sweat-soaked hair with his fingers. Thick hair, shaggy and unkempt and black as ink. The shadow of a new beard darkened his jaw.  **“This is Gendry. Strong for his age, and he works hard.**  Show the Hand that helmet you made, lad.” Almost shyly, the boy led them to his bench, and a steel helm shaped like a bull’s head, with two great curving horns._
> 
> **—A Game of Thrones - Eddard VI**

See? Both Joffrey and Gendry are described as tall and strong for their age, and since Brienne thought Gendry was a younger version of Renly the first time she saw him, we can surely say that Gendry was handsome as well:

 

> _Gendry was at his forge, bare-chested beneath his leather apron. He was beating on a sword as if he wished it were a foe, his sweat-soaked hair falling across his brow. She watched him for a moment. **He has Renly’s eyes and Renly’s hair, but not his build. Lord Renly was more lithe than brawny …** not like his brother Robert, whose strength was fabled._
> 
> **—A Feast for Crows - Brienne VII**
> 
> _“… till you stand before m'lady.” **Renly stood behind the girl, pushing his black hair out of his eyes. Not Renly. Gendry.** “M'lady means for you to answer for your crimes.”_
> 
> **—A Feast for Crows - Brienne VIII**

Even Sansa would agree that Gendry was handsome, since she thought this the first time she saw Renly:

 

> _His companion was a man near twenty whose armor was steel plate of a deep forest-green. **He was the handsomest man Sansa had ever set eyes upon; tall and powerfully made, with jet-black hair that fell to his shoulders and framed a clean-shaven face, and laughing green eyes to match his armor.**  Cradled under one arm was an antlered helm, its magnificent rack shimmering in gold._
> 
> **—A Game of Thrones - Sansa I**

So, from the information above we can conclude that:

  * Jack Gleeson doesn’t fit Book Joffrey’s physical appearance.
  * Joe Dempsie characterization sounds very similar to Book Gendry’s.
  * Book Joffrey was as hunky as Book Gendry.
  * **Book Arya thought that Joffrey was handsome.**
  * Book Sansa would think Book Gendry is handsome.



Now about Sansa’s taste in men, I also have a few things to say:

##  **THE BLONDES**

**Joffrey Baratheon (12 when Sansa met him).-**  Blonde, handsome, tall and strong for his age, a skilled dancer and the mother fucker even sang sweetly for Sansa once and told her she was very beautiful, so of course she fell for him or at least she thought she loved him.

 

> **“Sansa did not really know Joffrey yet, but she was already in love with him. He was all she ever dreamt her prince should be, tall and handsome and strong, with hair like gold.”**

Beyond his extraordinary physical appearance, Sansa didn’t know Joffrey and you simply can’t love what you don’t know, not really.

I think Sansa imposed the idea of Joffrey in her mind and she decided she loved him.  **This has to do with her strong sense of duty and her preconceptions of beauty and goodness that she learnt from the songs. It wasn’t a spontaneous attraction, she didn’t love him because her heart chose him; she loved him because he was her betrothed,**  who also happened to be the Crown Prince, the Heir to the Iron Throne, a golden boy, handsome, tall, strong. And before the Trident incident, he treated her like a gallant knight and made her feel like a lady in a song. And in the songs all the true knights are beautiful, but in real life physical beauty doesn’t mean goodness.

And if you are wondering, the answer is no,  **Joffrey wasn’t Sansa’s first crush.**   

 **Harrold Hardyng (18/19 when Sansa met him).-**  Another tall strong blonde, and you could think Sansa’s type are tall strong blondes, but that’s simply a wrong assumption.

 

> _My Harry. My lord, my lover, my betrothed._
> 
> _**Ser Harrold Hardyng looked every inch a lord-in-waiting; clean-limbed and handsome, straight as a lance, hard with muscle.**  Men old enough to have known Jon Arryn in his youth said Ser Harrold had his look, she knew.  **He had a mop of sandy blond hair, pale blue eyes, an aquiline nose. Joffrey was comely too, though, she reminded herself. A comely monster, that’s what he was. Little Lord Tyrion was kinder, twisted though he was.**_
> 
> _(…)_
> 
> _And there he stood, Harry the Heir himself; tall, handsome, scowling. “Lady Alayne. May I partner you in this dance?”_
> 
> **—The Winds of Winter - Alayne I**

As you can see, Sansa is trying, again, to impose the idea of Harry in in her mind:

 

> **“My Harry. My lord, my lover, my betrothed”.**

In both cases,  **the fact that Harry like Joffrey fitted very well in the concept of gallant golden knights, pretty things from pretty songs, helped her to accommodate them as her love interests.** But at this point, although Sansa is aware of Harry’s physical beauty, she is more careful, so she does not associate beauty with goodness automatically.

And no,  **Harry wasn’t Sansa’s first crush.**   

Sansa wanted true love, but since she cannot choose who she will get married to, she accommodates, she adapts, she adjusts the reality.    

An the reality was that Joffrey and Harry were imposed/forced on Sansa: Joff by her family and Harry by Petyr Baelish.  **And the reasons behind these arranged betrothals were obviously political reasons:**

 

> _Q: **I have no royal linage** , having cleared that up, what advice would you give me to ask Sansa out on a date?_
> 
> _A: **Laughs.**  Well ahh you know,  **if you have no nobility**  I don’t think the Stark family would be too interested in you dating Sansa.  **All the marriages was kind of arranged**  back them, they were  **political alliances between great houses** , and they had to bring some advantage and you know  **Sansa didn’t fool around with peasant boys….so that wasn’t gonna happen.**_
> 
> **—[GRRM - FIL de Guadalajara 2016](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DzmJMbDzH_NA&t=YmU2NmM1MWMyMWYzMTIxMmFkMDZjNjlhNjhjN2Q5ZDBkZDE4ZjBhOCxpbnpMS2Q0bg%3D%3D&b=t%3AqOp2V-Aompakif6TKfPSaA&p=https%3A%2F%2Fbutterflies-dragons.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F172012704389%2Fgalactic-eyed-dreamer-sansas-first-crush-vs&m=1)**

> _And then there are some things that are just don’t square with history. In some sense I’m trying to respond to that. [For example] the arranged marriage, which you see constantly in the historical fiction and television show, almost always when there’s an arranged marriage, **the girl doesn’t want it and rejects it and she runs off with the stable boy instead. This never fucking happened. It just didn’t.**  There were thousands, tens of thousand, perhaps hundreds of thousands of arranged marriages in the nobility through the thousand years of Middle Ages and people went through with them. That’s how you did it. It wasn’t questioned.  **Yeah, occasionally you would want someone else, but you wouldn’t run off with the stable boy.**_
> 
> _And that’s another of my pet peeves about fantasies. The bad authors adopt the class structures of the Middle Ages; where you had the royalty and then you had the nobility and you had the merchant class and then you have the peasants and so forth. But they don’t’ seem to realize what it actually meant. They have scenes where the spunky peasant girl tells off the pretty prince. The pretty prince would have raped the spunky peasant girl. He would have put her in the stocks and then had garbage thrown at her. You know._
> 
> _I mean, the class structures in places like this had teeth. They had consequences. **And people were brought up from their childhood to know their place and to know that duties of their class and the privileges of their class.**  It was always a source of friction when someone got outside of that thing. And I tried to reflect that._
> 
> **—[GRRM - TIMES 2011](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fentertainment.time.com%2F2011%2F04%2F18%2Fgrrm-interview-part-2-fantasy-and-history%2F&t=NTg5NTlhMTEzN2ViYjVhYjMzMzBhNzYzNWMxYzJhNGJjNzA2OTAyNSxnc2hJdGtqVQ%3D%3D&b=t%3AqOp2V-Aompakif6TKfPSaA&p=https%3A%2F%2Fbutterflies-dragons.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F172761901779%2Fabout-sansas-first-crush-and-her-taste-in-men&m=1)**

See?  **Sansa knows her duties.**

Joffrey was the Crown Prince, the Heir to the Iron Throne, and Harry was even called the Heir because he aspired to be Lord of the Eyrie, Defender of the Vale, and Warden of the East.

When King Robert proposed Joffrey and Sansa’s betrothal, he was trying to reenact his own betrothal to Lyanna Stark, that was part of the so called [Southron Ambitions Theory](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.quora.com%2FWhat-is-the-theory-of-Southron-Ambitions&t=ZmY2YmEyMjI0ZmQ5YzVhYWZhZjdlYzQ4M2JiMDY2ODUyYTk2NjcyOCxpbnpMS2Q0bg%3D%3D&b=t%3AqOp2V-Aompakif6TKfPSaA&p=https%3A%2F%2Fbutterflies-dragons.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F172012704389%2Fgalactic-eyed-dreamer-sansas-first-crush-vs&m=1).  And when Petyr Baelish proposed Harry and Alayne/Sansa betrothal, he was trying to gain more political power to further his own agenda. But here is the thing with these shiny golden betrothals: they both are doomed because both male fiancés are fake.  **Joffrey is no prince but a bastard and Harry is no heir but a pretender,**  the second in line after Robert Arryn (Sweetrobin), a sick little boy that everyone assumes is soon to die.    

The funny thing is that both real heirs that Joffrey and Harry tried to replace, are dark haired: Any true-born/bastard son of Robert Baratheon would have black hair, and Jon Arryn’s only living child, Sweetrobin, has brown hair.

So now the question is: Does Sansa like men with dark hair? Let’s see:

##  **THE DARK HAIRED**

**Renly Baratheon (20/21 when Sansa met him).-**  Renly is black haired and according to Sansa:  _ **“He was the handsomest man Sansa had ever set eyes upon”.**_

Renly was also tall, powerfully made, and according to Brienne:  _ **“Lord Renly was more lithe than brawny … not like his brother Robert, whose strength was fabled.”**_

Sansa freely and spontaneously expressed her opinion about Renly, less romanticized than her description of Joffrey:

 

> **_The handsomest man Sansa had ever set eyes upon > He was all she ever dreamt her prince should be/every inch a lord-in-waiting  _ **
> 
> **_Black hair > Blonde hair_ **
> 
> **_lithe > strong for his age_ **

But no,  **Renly wasn’t Sansa’s first crush.**   

 **Loras Tyrell (16 when Sansa met him).-** Loras has brown hair and according to Sansa:  ** _“[She] had never seen anyone so beautiful”._**  

 

> _Ser Loras was the youngest son of Mace Tyrell, the Lord of Highgarden and Warden of the South. **At sixteen, he was the youngest rider on the field** , yet he had unhorsed three knights of the Kingsguard that morning in his first three jousts.  **Sansa had never seen anyone so beautiful.**_
> 
> _(…)_
> 
> _**Her eyes were only for Ser **Loras**. When the white horse stopped in front of her, she thought her heart would burst.   
>  ** _
> 
> **—A Game of Thrones - Sansa II**
> 
> _**When the Knight of Flowers made his entrance, a murmur ran through the crowd, and he heard Sansa’s fervent whisper, “Oh, he’s so beautiful.” Ser Loras Tyrell was slender as a reed** , dressed in a suit of fabulous silver armor polished to a blinding sheen and filigreed with twining black vines and tiny blue forget-me-nots._
> 
> _(…)_ _  
> _
> 
> _His courser was as slim as her rider, a beautiful grey mare, built for speed. Ser Gregor’s huge stallion trumpeted as he caught her scent. The boy from Highgarden did something with his legs, and his horse pranced sideways, nimble as a dancer. **Sansa clutched at his arm. “Father, don’t let Ser Gregor hurt him,” she said. Ned saw she was wearing the rose that Ser Loras had given her yesterday. Jory had told him about that as well.**_
> 
> ****—** A Game of Thrones - Eddard VII** **  
> **
> 
> _Ser Gregor was the monster and Ser Loras the true hero who would slay him. **He even looked a true hero, so slim and beautiful, with golden roses around his slender waist and his rich brown hair tumbling down into his eyes.**_
> 
> **—A Game of Thrones - Sansa III**
> 
> _**The sight of Ser Loras Tyrell standing on her threshold made Sansa’s heart beat a little faster**. This was the first time she had been so close to him since he had returned to King’s Landing, leading the vanguard of his father’s host. For a moment she did not know what to say.  **“Ser Loras,” she finally managed, “you … you look so lovely.”**_
> 
> **—A Storm of Swords - Sansa I**  
> 
> _She could never hold a picture of Willas long in her head, though; **her imaginings kept turning him back into Ser Loras, young and graceful and beautiful.**_
> 
> **—A Storm of Swords - Sansa II**

Again, Sansa freely and spontaneously expressed her opinion about how beautiful Loras was, even though she was betrothed to marry Joffrey by then.

We are getting closer to Sansa’s real type, not the imposed blondes:

 

> _**Beautiful > Handsome > What a prince/lord should be  ** _
> 
> _**Brown hair > Black hair > Blonde hair** _
> 
> _**Slim/Slender > powerful made > Strong for his age** _

And while  **Loras Tyrell wasn’t Sansa’s first crush,**  after her first period, the beautiful  **Knight of Flowers**  was Sansa’s first sexual fantasy:    

 

> _Wed to Ser Loras, oh … Sansa’s breath caught in her throat. She remembered Ser Loras in his sparkling sapphire armor, tossing her a rose. **Ser Loras in white silk, so pure, innocent, beautiful.**  The dimples at the corner of his mouth when he smiled. The sweetness of his laugh, the warmth of his hand.  **She could only imagine what it would be like to pull up his tunic and caress the smooth skin underneath, to stand on her toes and kiss him, to run her fingers through those thick brown curls and drown in his deep brown eyes. A flush crept up her neck.**_
> 
> **—A Storm of Swords - Sansa I**

## Also take note that Renly and Loras, in contrast with Joff and Harry, were both the third son of a High Lord, not the Heir of their houses.  **So please discard the idea that Sansa Stark was power hungry, she wanted love and to be loved; to be a loyal wife and a devoted mother. Those were her goals, not sitting on an ugly iron chair and ruling the world.**  

Renly and Loras were also both gay and a couple, but we are not talking about Sansa’s broken gay radar here.

Moreover, if you have any doubt that Sansa likes brown hair, read at this:

 

> _Lysa seated herself near the fire and said, “Come to Mother, my sweet one.” She straightened his bedclothes and fussed with his fine **brown hair**. “Isn’t he beautiful? And strong too, don’t you believe the things you hear. Jon knew._
> 
> **—A Game of Thrones - Catelyn VI**
> 
> _She sat on the bed and smoothed his long, fine hair. **He does have pretty hair.**  Lady Lysa had brushed it herself every night, and cut it when it wanted cutting._
> 
> **—A Feast for Crows - Alayne II**
> 
> _**He does have pretty hair. If the gods are good and he lives long enough to wed, his wife will admire his hair, surely. That much she will love about him.** _
> 
> **—The Winds of Winter - Alayne I**

See? Our author GRRM made sure to tell us in two different books that  **Sansa finds her cousin Robert Arryn’s brown hair pretty** , that his future wife would admire his pretty hair, because that much Sansa herself would love about him. Do these words sound familiar to you? Because I find them very similar to her fantasy of running her fingers through Loras’ thick brown curls.  **Sansa clearly has a thing for brown hair!**   ~~Now, how many other cousins with brown hair does Sansa have?~~

So now we could surely say that Sansa’s preferences in men include  **brown hair and slim slender bodies.**  And guess what? Sansa’s first crush had these exactly same features.

**Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to Sansa’s first crush, Ser Waymar Royce:**

**Waymar Royce (17/18 when Sansa met him).-**  Sansa’s first crush, handsome, graceful and slender:  

 

> _Ser Waymar Royce was the youngest son of an ancient house with too many heirs. He was a **handsome youth of eighteen, grey-eyed and graceful and slender as a knife.**_
> 
> **—A Game of Thrones – Prologue**

And Waymar Royce, like Renly and Loras, was the third and youngest son of his house and with no heirdom to aspire to, he chose to serve in The Wall.  

But despite the fact that Waymar was no Heir and chose to serve in The Wall,  **Sansa fell ‘wildly in love’ with him:**   

 

> _“Bronze Yohn knows me,” she reminded him. “He was a guest at Winterfell when his son rode north to take the black.” **She had fallen wildly in love with Ser Waymar, she remembered dimly, but that was a lifetime ago, when she was a stupid little girl.** “And that was not the only time. Lord Royce saw … he saw Sansa Stark again at King’s Landing, during the Hand’s tourney.”_
> 
> **—A Feast for Crows - Alayne I**

Sansa Stark fell  _ **‘wildly in love’**_  with a third son of an old noble house who decided to serve in The Wall, that required him to swear a lifelong vow to take no wife, hold no lands, father no children.

So what did this particular boy have that made Sansa expressed her feelings for him in such unladylike way:  _ **‘wildly in love’**_?

Compare the words  **‘wildly in love’**  with the words she used to describes Loras during her sexual fantasy:  ** _“Ser Loras in white silk, so pure, innocent, beautiful”._**

The contrast is very telling. Even though Sansa was fantasizing about her wedding night with Loras, the way she described him was profoundly romanticized:  **‘** _ **so pure, innocent, beautiful’.**  _But when Sansa thinks about Waymar, she uses two strong words: love and wild.  **She claims that she loved Waymar wildly and that is a very bold and visceral statement.**       

I will tell you what Waymar had that surpassed any other boy/man mentioned here so far:  **Waymar Royce looked like a Stark.**       

At this point you could argue that Loras Tyrell doesn’t look like a Stark and despite that, Sansa developed a very strong physical attraction to him. But let me tell you this:  

 

> _“Yet it seems that he was not invited on these rides.” Ned was not sure what to make of Renly, with all his friendly ways and easy smiles. A few days past, he had taken Ned aside to show him an exquisite rose gold locklet. **Inside was a miniature painted in the vivid Myrish style, of a lovely young girl with doe’s eyes and a cascade of soft brown hair.**  Renly had seemed anxious to know if the girl reminded him of anyone, and when Ned had no answer but a shrug, he had seemed disappointed.  **The maid was Loras Tyrell’s sister Margaery, he’d confessed, but there were those who said she looked like Lyanna. “No,” Ned had told him, bemused.**  Could it be that Lord Renly, who looked so like a young Robert, had conceived a passion for  **a girl he fancied to be a young Lyanna?**  That struck him as more than passing queer._
> 
> **—A Game of Thrones - Eddard VI**

At some point in the story, Renly had the intention of present Margaery to Robert as a renewed version of Lyanna Stark, so they could get rid of Cersei and  **make Robert marry Margaery appealing to her resemblance of Lyanna Stark** :

 

> _Sighing, Renly half turned in the saddle. “What am I to do with this brother of mine, Brienne? He refuses my peach, he refuses my castle, he even shunned my wedding …”_
> 
> _“We both know your wedding was a mummer’s farce. **A year ago you were scheming to make the girl one of Robert’s whores.”**_
> 
> _**“A year ago I was scheming to make the girl Robert’s queen,”**  Renly said, “but what does it matter? The boar got Robert and I got Margaery. You’ll be pleased to know she came to me a maid.”_
> 
> **—A Clash of Kings - Catelyn III**

And if Margaery had at least a slightly resemblance of Lyanna Stark, even if it’s only the brown hair, that means that Loras had it as well:  

 

> _“Sansa, would you like to visit Highgarden?” **When Margaery Tyrell smiled, she looked very like her brother Loras.**_
> 
> **—A Storm of Swords - Sansa I**
> 
> _Queen Margaery, she reminded herself; Joff’s widow and Tommen’s wife-to-be. **Margaery looked very like her brother, the Knight of Flowers.**  The queen wondered if they had other things in common._
> 
> **—A Feast for Crows - Cersei II**
> 
> _Whilst Alla, Elinor, and Megga took their turns with Tommen, Margaery took a turn around the floor with her father, then another with her brother Loras. The Knight of Flowers was in white silk, with a belt of golden roses about his waist and a jade rose fastening his cloak. **They could be twins, Cersei thought as she watched them.**   **Ser Loras was a year older than his sister, but they had the same big brown eyes, the same thick brown hair falling in lazy ringlets to their shoulders, the same smooth unblemished skin.**  A ripe crop of pimples would teach them some humility. Loras was taller and had a few wisps of soft brown fuzz on his face, and Margaery had a woman’s shape,  **but elsewise they were more alike than she and Jaime. That annoyed her too.**_
> 
> **—A Feast for Crows - Cersei III**

See? Loras is just a male version of Margaery, they could be twins, both are slender and have brown hair and George made sure of telling us, although very subtly, that he looks a bit like Lyanna Stark, even at a symbolical level, as my friend @lostlittlesatellites explained [here](http://lostlittlesatellites.tumblr.com/post/169954857017/horses-and-flowers).  

So both Waymar and Loras, the two boys that Sansa Stark fancied the most, in greater or lesser amount,  **look like a Stark.**       

I know, I know, the Books don’t explicitly say that Waymar had brown hair, but I reached that conclusion because  **Waymar Royce’s description matches word by word Jon Snow’s description, and Jon Snow is the embodiment of the Stark Look, which is, with certainty, Sansa’s preference in men.**

But before talk about the  _ **Stark Look**_ , let’s talk about the age of all the boys/men mentioned here: Joffrey (12), Loras (16), Waymar (17/18), Harry (18/19), and Renly (20/21).  

Renly is the older one at 20/21 years old and he is also the only one that Sansa described specifically as  ** _‘a man’_** , and that makes sense because he was almost twice her age, and  **for Sansa a man twice her age, no matter how handsome he could be, is _‘awfully old’_ :**

 

> _“Lord Beric is as much a hero as Ser Loras. He’s ever so brave and gallant.”_
> 
> _“I suppose,” Sansa said doubtfully. **Beric Dondarrion was handsome enough, but he was awfully old, almost twenty-two;**  the Knight of Flowers would have been much better. Of course, Jeyne had been in love with Lord Beric ever since she had first glimpsed him in the lists. Sansa thought she was being silly; Jeyne was only a steward’s daughter, after all, and no matter how much she mooned after him, Lord Beric would never look at someone so far beneath him,  **even if she hadn’t been half his age.**_
> 
> **—A Game of Thrones - Sansa III**

And if you don’t believe me about this subject, then believe the words of GRRM himself talking about a certain ship that paired Sansa with a man more than twice her age:

 

> **weltraummuell:**  The Hound  
>  Oh please don’t cast an old guy for the Hound, his scenes with Sansa are so romantic and erotic, I couldn’t bear if it’d feel creepy all of a sudden.  
>  Well, that’s me making demands. LOL
> 
> _**GRRM:**  Re: The Hound  
>  **Old guy? No, but… the Hound is still a whole lot older than Sansa** , and was never written as attractive… you know, those hideous burns and all that…  **he’s a lot more dangerous than he is romantic.**   _
> 
> **—[Not A Blog - Aug. 21st, 2009](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fgrrm.livejournal.com%2F103284.html%3Fpage%3D2%23comments&t=MTk3ZTNhMzg2YmZlZDA1NjVlYjdjYTkxYmU4OTE1NDNjNzcxOWZmMCxnc2hJdGtqVQ%3D%3D&b=t%3AqOp2V-Aompakif6TKfPSaA&p=https%3A%2F%2Fbutterflies-dragons.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F172761901779%2Fabout-sansas-first-crush-and-her-taste-in-men&m=1)**

##  **So please discard the idea that Sansa Stark likes older men. For Sansa, and for GRRM, any men that is twice her age is AWFULLY OLD!**

Now let’s move to the final and more relevant part of this post:

##  **THE STARK LOOK**

**Jon Snow (14-16 throughout the Books).-**  GRRM has used Jon Snow to let us know the definition of the  _ **Stark Look**_ :

 

> _**Jon’s eyes were a grey so dark they seemed almost black,** but there was little they did not see. He was of an age with Robb, but they did not look alike.  **Jon was slender where Robb was muscular, dark where Robb was fair, graceful and quick where his half brother was strong and fast.**_
> 
> **—A Game of Thrones - Bran I**
> 
> _The boy absorbed that all in silence. **He had the Stark face if not the name: long, solemn, guarded, a face that gave nothing away.**  Whoever his mother had been, she had left little of herself in her son._
> 
> **—A Game of Thrones - Tyrion II**
> 
> _She might have overlooked a dozen bastards for Ned’s sake, so long as they were out of sight. Jon was never out of sight, and as he grew, **he looked more like Ned than any of the trueborn sons she bore him.**_
> 
> **—A Game of Thrones - Catelyn II**
> 
> _“A shade more exhausting than needlework,” Jon observed.  
>  “A shade more fun than needlework,” Arya gave back at him. Jon grinned, reached over, and messed up her hair. Arya flushed.  **They had always been close. Jon had their father’s face, as she did.**_
> 
> **—A Game of Thrones - Arya I**
> 
> _Sansa could never understand how two sisters, born only two years apart, could be so different. It would have been easier if Arya had been a bastard, like their half brother Jon. **She even looked like Jon, with the long face and brown hair of the Starks, and nothing of their lady mother in her face or her coloring.**_
> 
> **—A Game of Thrones - Sansa I**
> 
> _“Who’s this one now?“ Craster said before Jon could go. **“He has the look of a Stark.”  
>  ** “My steward and squire, Jon Snow.”_
> 
> **—A Clash of Kings - Jon III**

See? Jon Snow is acknowledged as a Stark just by looking at his face.  **He looks like a younger version of Ned: long solemn face, grey eyes and brown hair.**

And as I said before Jon Snow shares many features with Sansa’s first crush, Waymar Royce:

  * _Jon and Waymar have **grey eyes.**_
  * _Jon and Waymar have **slender bodies.**_
  * _Jon and Waymar are described as **graceful.**_



Just like Jon looks as a younger version of Ned, is very probable that Waymar looked like a younger version of his father, Bronze Yohn Royce, who also shares features with Jon and Ned:  **a solemn face and grey eyes** :

 

> _Last of all came the Royces, Lord Nestor and Bronze Yohn. The Lord of Runestone stood as tall as the Hound. Though his hair was grey and his face lined, Lord Yohn still looked as though he could break younger men like twigs in those huge gnarled hands. **His seamed and solemn face brought back all of Sansa’s memories of his time at Winterfell.**  She remembered him at table, speaking quietly with her mother. She heard his voice booming off the walls when he rode back from a hunt with a buck behind his saddle. She could see him in the yard, a practice sword in hand, hammering her father to the ground and turning to defeat Ser Rodrik as well. He will know me. How could he not?  **She considered throwing herself at his feet to beg for his protection.**  He never fought for Robb, why should he fight for me? The war is finished and Winterfell is fallen. “Lord Royce,” she asked timidly, “will you have a cup of wine, to take the chill off?”_
> 
> _**Bronze Yohn had slate-grey eyes,**  half-hidden beneath the bushiest eyebrows she had ever seen. They crinkled when he looked down at her. “Do I know you, girl?”_
> 
> **—A Feast for Crows - Alayne I**

So I think we could also add solemn face to the list:

  * _Jon and Waymar have **grey eyes.**_
  * _Jon and Waymar have **solemn faces.**_
  * _Jon and Waymar have **slender bodies.**_
  * _Jon and Waymar are described as **graceful.**_



The resemblance between the Starks and the Royces maybe has to be with both houses being descendants of the First Men.

And if you don’t have enough similarities between Jon and Waymar, let me tell you this:

  * _Both with no place in their own houses, chose to serve at The Wall._
  * _Both wanted to be Rangers, Waymar actually became a Ranger but Jon, despite being a Steward, went on a mission beyond The Wall as a Ranger, just like Waymar._
  * _Waymar’s death is eerily similar to Jon’s death, as my friend[@lady-in-a-song](https://tmblr.co/mToi2Gb5I2BdvTUkmqqh-wg) explained [here](https://lady-in-a-song.tumblr.com/post/165831265725/clues-about-jon-snows-fate-hidden-in-the-prologue)._
  * _They both are connected to Sansa Stark. I wrote about it[here](https://butterflies-dragons.tumblr.com/post/161469954394/marydri-butterflies-dragons-before-i-go-to)and [here](https://butterflies-dragons.tumblr.com/post/162797291864/sansa-stark-a-wolf-with-dragon-wings-i-an) and [@lady-in-a-song](https://tmblr.co/mToi2Gb5I2BdvTUkmqqh-wg) wrote about it [here](https://lady-in-a-song.tumblr.com/post/165831355750/how-the-prologue-of-agot-proves-jonsa-is-endgame)._
  * _And you can also find more similarities between Jon and Waymar in[this recent post](https://randomtvramblings.tumblr.com/post/172331088972/jon-and-waymar-royce)._



With all this similarities, I think we could also add brown hair to the list:

  * _Jon and Waymar have **grey eyes.**_
  * _Jon and Waymar have **brow hair.**_
  * _Jon and Waymar have **solemn faces.**_
  * _Jon and Waymar have **slender bodies.**_
  * _Jon and Waymar are described as **graceful.**_



And about the  _ **Stark Look**_  there is also a theory that says The Others are in a hunt of men with the  _ **Stark Look**_ , and that was the reason to kill Waymar. Benjen Stark, another man with the  _ **Stark Look**_ , also disappeared beyond The Wall, precisely while looking for Waymar Royce.

And on the subject of Benjen Stark,  **another man of a noble house with no heirdom to aspire to, that chose to serve in The Wall** , take note that Sansa, before she met Yoren, had always imagined the Night’s Watch to be men like her Uncle Benjen. She recalled that in the songs, they were called the black knights of the Wall. That is to say,  **Sansa held the men who take the black on high regard and associated them with her beloved knights from the songs.**   

##  **Sansa really has a thing for the Stark Look.**

And is very clear that the origin of this thing with the  _ **Stark Look**_  is Sansa’s father, Lord Eddard Stark.

Sansa always sought Ned’s approval and validation, but she never reached that goal. She and Ned had a distant relationship that got worse after Lady’s death. Ned neglected Sansa in various levels [[1](http://bluecichlid.tumblr.com/post/98538903294/ned-sansa-and-joffrey-part-i)] [[2](http://bluecichlid.tumblr.com/post/98584452039/ned-sansa-and-joffrey-part-ii)] [[3](http://bluecichlid.tumblr.com/post/98692702679/ned-sansa-and-joffrey-part-iii)], and focused in Arya, who resembled Lyanna so much, and the guilt for not saving his sister impeded him to see that Sansa was the one about to make the same mistakes of Lyanna, that Sansa was the one daughter that needed him the most.    

So throughout the Books, we have Sansa constantly trying to find something of what Ned never gave to her in others, either crushing on boys that look like Ned or trusting in men that offered her assurance and/or validation, although with ulterior motives.   _ ~~But there is still hope that Sansa will find a man that resembles Ned not only physically but share the same values, ethics and background, since he was raised by Ned himself~~_.    

Finally, I have to say that the fact that Sansa’s first crush looks just like her bastard half brother  ~~cousin~~  Jon Snow, who in turn looks just like her father Ned Stark, strongly suggests that our author GRRM has a morbid fascination with incest. But in Sansa’s case the incest vibes are subtle, not extreme like in Cersei and Jaime’s case, which has strong narcissistic elements to it as well.    

In conclusion, according to the book evidence provided above, we can say the following regarding Sansa’s taste in men:

##  **_The Stark Look > everything_ **

So, if you are a noble son of a powerful house of Westeros (secret princes included), between the ages of 13 and 19, with the  _ **Stark Look**_ , a slender and graceful physique, and the willingness to defend the realm Night’s Watch style, you have a shot with Sansa Stark. She would probably get wild about you.  ~~Your move Jon Snow.~~

[Originally posted on Tumblr on Apr 9th, 2018](https://butterflies-dragons.tumblr.com/post/172761901779/about-sansas-first-crush-and-her-taste-in-men)


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